Frederic Amiel Quotes

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions – such a man is a mere article of the worlds furniture – a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being – an echo, not a voice.

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?

Almost everything comes from almost nothing.

An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves.

The stationary condition is the beginning of the end

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence.

Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

Hope is only the love of life.

I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.

Wisdom has its shipwrecks which are more ugly than those of madness.

Whoever is unwilling to make mistakes should not act.

Uniformity...creates a void, and Nature abhors a vacuum.

Whoever becomes a sheep is eaten by wolves.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

A dog's life! and not so much as a cat to help me...

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

Be swift to love and make haste to be kind. Gladden others’ hearts.” .

Let us do better.

Habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book.

I am capable of all the passions, for I bear them all within me. Like a tamer of wild beasts, I keep them caged and lassoed, but I sometimes hear them growling. I have stifled more than one nascent love. Why? Because with that prophetic certainty which belongs to moral intuition, I felt it lacking in true life, and less durable than myself. I choked it down in the name of the supreme affection to come. The loves of sense, of imagination, of sentiment, I have seen through and rejected them all; I sought the love which springs from the central profundities of being. And I still believe in it. I will have none of those passions of straw which dazzle, burn up, and wither; I invoke, I await, and I hope for the love which is great, pure and earnest, which lives and works in all the fibers and through all the powers of the soul. And even if I go lonely to the end, I would rather my hope and my dream died with me, than that my soul should content itself with any meaner union.

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time. Henri Frederic Amiel